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For the first time in Calgary, snow removal will actually mean snow removal.

In a break with its much-criticized normal practices, Calgary has contracted trucks to remove snow from many residential streets this January — rather than just plow it to the side and create even more mountainous windrows.

“The snow load is such today that I don’t have any other room to push snow in the most of the residential areas,” roads director Ryan Jestin said Monday.

This won’t be cheap, tapping about $6.7 million from the city’s snow clearing reserves.

This won’t be fast, either. Sixteen crews are on the roads now, but finishing all city streets that need it will take four weeks, Jestin told reporters.

The city cannot say how many roads will get snow removal. It will be based on frequency of resident complaints and road crews’ own assessments of which roads are the worst. If a side street still has 12 centimetres of snow and there’s no place to plow it aside, it will get snow removal, spokeswoman Jennifer Thompson-Goldberg said.

Crews are serving all quadrants but are focused on southeast Calgary now, because its roads are the worst.

Late Monday afternoon, the roads division issued a list of 31 communities that will be first get enhanced service. After Herald queries about other hard-hit communities the city expanded that list to 34, and then removed it altogether.

Jestin admitted Tuesday the list shouldn’t have ever gone up as a list of the only communities that would get snow removal — one which suggested the northeast had already been done. “Every community will be looked at. Every road will be looked at,” he said in an interview, before briefing a council committee meeting.

On a narrow side street in Silverado, Michelle Taylor hopes her road gets the service. Coming from Ottawa, she’s used to snow removal, but has only seen a plow down her southwest road once this season.

“We’ve resorted to shovelling out our parking spot after every snowfall just to have a hope in hell of parking again,” she said.

“I avoid driving unless I absolutely have to.”

This move will also usher in a new level of parking bans, the likes of which Calgary normally gets during spring cleanup.

Snowblower and dump-truck teams need to operate side by side to remove snow. The day before streets get removal, no-parking signs will go out so crews can have a wide berth down the road. But they’ll only get the windrows hauled away and a clear centre lane, rather than curb-to-curb removal.

This type of snow control hasn’t occurred before in Calgary — bureaucrats always say it’s too costly and not necessary — but is common in snowier, chinook-free cities like Montreal and Ottawa.

But this has been an usually terrible winter, unusually early.

Residents have spent multiple days unable to leave their homes. Motorists are getting stuck in intersections.

Councillors and city officials are struggling to dig their way out of mounds and mounds of customer complaints.

So a city whose policy included no routine residential side street plowing until a few years ago has upgraded its response to a new level. Code White, if you will.

The city received 52.4-centimetres of snow last month, making it the whitest December in more than a century. Normally, winter’s brunt comes in January and February, so this month of Cadillac-style snow clearing is designed to take care of the massive backlog that December produced.

“It has to happen, regardless of budgetary constraints,” said southeast Coun. Shane Keating.

In the second phase of this approach, some back lanes where garbage trucks can’t pass will also get cleared, Thompson-Goldberg said.

Because the city has to hire contract crews and trucks for this extra service — and some contractors may have to hire back workers on seasonal layoff, Jestin said — removal teams cost $240,000 a day. Crews will work independently of the main plowing teams, so this four-week plan can proceed if more storms hit, the roads director said.

Because of light snowfalls in the past couple winters, there’s enough in the city’s snow reserve to handle this nearly $7-million draw. And it may never happen again, because there’s no room in the city’s $34-million annual snow control budget for it.

If this became an annual cost, it would translate into roughly a 0.5-per-cent property tax hike.

Since council upgraded the snow control policy a few years ago, the roads division has been able to handle the city’s relatively light winters with far fewer complaints than normal.

But this season, top officials like Jestin have admitted an inadequate response, and councillors asked them to consider better ways of handling major snow dumps.

Northeast: Some roads had snow removal in December, but will get looked at again.

Source: City of Calgary

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For first time citywide, crews will remove snow, not just plow it aside

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